Volume 8.1 Spring / Summer 2010

Every moment and every event of our lives on earth plants something in our souls. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds, so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in our minds and wills. Most of these unnumbered seeds perish and are lost, because we are not prepared to receive them: for such seeds as these cannot spring up anywhere except in the good soil of freedom, spontaneity and love.

—Thomas Merton[i]

While waiting in line to pay for my wife’s birthday gift, I spied something called “Lavender in a Bag.” Liz loves lavender, so I had to get it. The directions were simple: “Empty the seed pouch into the soil bag, and add water.”

Upon seeing Liz’s joy over the brown bag, our two-and-a-half-year-old son, Tyler, was confused. “What is it, a bag of dirt?” he asked.

We thought about it for a minute. “Well, yes and no.”

“What do you mean?” he pressed.

“The seeds and dirt in this bag represent how everything in the whole world works.”

His big green eyes lit up.

“Just like you, these seeds need food and love and care. If we put them in the soil and water them, over time a plant will grow. Eventually the plant will sprout pretty flowers that smell nice.”

“I like flowers,” he said before peppering us with more questions.

When he’d exhausted our knowledge of the natural world, we explained that each day he could peek inside the bag to see what was happening.

For the first week, Tyler checked the bag every day to find only dirt. He was disappointed, but he held out hope that something would happen.

And something did. When he peeked into the bag on the eighth day, he was thrilled to see small sprouts pushing their way through the soil. Each day thereafter, the lavender plants continued to grow, and so did Tyler’s enthusiasm.

Driving to work each morning after checking on the lavender plants with my son, I felt an overwhelming sense of peace and clarity. It was good to see my son so excited by nature and to be able to teach him. It was nice to remember my own wonder as a child experiencing things for the first time. And it was important to be reminded that at its base, life is as simple as seeds, soil, nurturing, and growth.

Then one day, Tyler asked, “Where did the seeds go?”

Trying to recover from pride in my son’s insightful question and its philosophical magnitude (out of the mouths of babes!), all I could think to say was, “Well, honey, they became what God intended them to be.”

The moment my son asked that question, I felt as if he’d just put into words the essence of my spiritual quest. What seeds has God sown all around me? What has become of them when they hit the soil of my life? Who does God intend for me to be? How might I be more open to transformation?

To hear an interview with author Jeremy Langford, please click here.

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Arthur Paul Boers is an associate professor of Pastoral Theology at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana. He is the author of several books on prayer. His most recent book is The Way Is Made by Walking: A Pilgrimage Along the Camino de Santiago (Baker Books, 2007). After reading it, Jeannette suggested that our readers might enjoy this conversation as much as she knew she would.

Jeannette Bakke: Arthur, in The Way Is Made by Walking, you describe walking 500 miles “to go to church.” What made you decide to undertake the ancient pilgrimage to the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, Spain?

APB: In 2000, I visited Taizé, Iona, and the Northumbrian Community. As I traveled, I read about pilgrimages and about the Camino de Santiago. It was the third most important pilgrimage route in medieval times, and I learned that it was becoming popular again. After I came home, I found out that somebody I know had walked it, and I read his book. I wondered, “Why would anybody do that?”

Then I read a newspaper article about middle-aged women walking the 500-mile-long Bruce Trail in Ontario. I’d lived most of my life near this trail and decided to walk on it, a day here and there as I was able. I soon discovered it was reorienting me. I was seeing things differently—time moved more slowly when I walked. Days would stretch out. The scenery surprised me. I was stunned by how beautiful it was. Then I noticed that what happened to me was very similar to what happens when I go on retreat. As I walked, I started to recognize where life was off balance. I was reminded of my priorities and made resolutions to live according to them. I became convinced that long-distance walking was a spiritual discipline. Remembering the Christian tradition of pilgrimages, I quickly decided to go to Santiago. And within a couple of years, I did.

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The rite of baptism is a snapshot of the transformation that God seeks to work in us throughout the rest of our Christian lives. In the Christian churches, the rite of baptism is both a rite of entry and an instrument of transformation. But because we are taught that baptism is a one-time act, we may not know how to use this rite fully as the formational help it is intended to be.

I’d like to suggest some ways we can experience our baptism again, intentionally, on a daily basis. As Martin Luther observed, our baptism—however long ago the event—offers “a garment which the disciple is to put on every day, each day putting the old person to death a little more and nurturing the new person toward maturity.”[1] By holding our own baptism regularly before our eyes, by returning again and again to its implications for our lives, we become more fully each day the new person who came to birth by water and the Spirit.

In the words of Michael Green, “the whole of the Christian life in time and in eternity is, in a sense, encapsulated in baptism. The Christian life is a baptismal life, and it is all about dying and rising with Christ, in this world and hereafter.”[2] The rite of baptism initiates us into this baptismal life. It sets out the contours of a transformational process that we are intentionally to engage each day.

In my own spiritual journey, both Scripture and the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer have been equally formative for my understanding of the baptismal life. Scripture provides the primary images and expresses the essential significance of baptism; the liturgy (itself infused with Scripture and sound spiritual counsel) offers a means by which people can grab hold of that significance, begin to live it out, and return to in order to find help for the ongoing journey.

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[2] Michael Green, Baptism. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1987, 50.

I remember the first time I noticed that some people arrange their lives to see sunsets. It was summertime in the Gulf of Florida when the days were hot and the nights were balmy. During the day, crowds of people were out lying in the sun and playing noisily on the beach, but in the early evening the real sun lovers came out. These were the ones who planned their whole day around seeing the sunset; in the early evening they would emerge from their condos with beach chairs and maybe a glass of wine. They would position their chairs at the edge of the water and settle in as though they were awaiting the beginning of a much-anticipated movie or play. At first there was chatting, but as the sun sank lower in the sky, people would become quiet; couples would lean in closer to each other; children would stop their playing, and beachcombers would pause just to watch. As the sun hung low on the horizon, pregnant with color, and the cloud formations glowed from the inside out, a reverent hush would descend upon all who were gathered. In that fullness of time no words were necessary. It was enough just to be in the presence of such beauty.

Despite how hard we often tend to work at it, Christian spiritual transformation is not something we are either responsible for or able to do much about. It is God’s business. And we should be careful to keep our noses out of God’s business and mind our own.

Self-improvement spirituality is the offspring of the therapeutic culture of the late twentieth century and the spirituality culture of the opening decade of the twenty-first. It is far too narcissistic and willful to be of the Spirit. Getting our spiritual act together is not the point of Christ following. God is that point. Even checking to see how my transformation is going is a distraction that merely shifts my attention from God to myself. The self-preoccupation this involves gets in the road of seeing where God is actually at work—something we are seldom able to glimpse because God’s ways are not our ways. Have no doubt about it; God is at work making all things new in Christ. But the way God does this is much more like the mustard seed in the story Jesus told in the Gospels than the sort of triumphalistic stories we want to hear—and sometimes tell each other. It happens in the darkness beyond our sight, and it seems to take forever.

While God’s work in our depths is beyond our control, we can cooperate with it. We do this by making space for God and for the things that bring God to us and open us to God. One of the most transformational ways we can do this is by turning toward God, as we can, in openness and surrender.

This is where contemplation enters in. Contemplation is not merely a style of relating to God or the world that is suitable for those of a certain disposition or personality type. Contemplation is important for all of us who seek to make space for God. Contemplation is as basic as turning and looking.

Recall the story of Moses, the children of Israel, and the poisonous snakes in the wilderness. After many of them were bitten and started to die, God told Moses to create a bronze replica of the snake and hold it high on a rod, instructing people to look at it and be healed. In doing so, Moses illustrated the role of artist as healer—creating a work of art that others, by gazing on it, might experience a restoration of well-being and a renewal of life that has been lost. He also offered a prototype of the contemplation that has been encouraged by the cover art and guided meditation on it that has been part of each issue of Conversations to this point.

Stillness before God is essential for the deep encounter with self and God that forms the core of spiritual transformation. Our part is to make time and space for that encounter in stillness. Contemplation is an important way in which we can do this. Most essentially, it is simply being still before God in openness and trust and turning our attention from ourselves to God.

With this issue we end our regular involvement with Conversations. When we signed on to our respective roles at the launch of the journal, we made a commitment to support the project through its first seven years of development. That has happened, and we now look forward to turning our responsibilities over to others as we move on to new opportunities. Thanks be to God for grace and blessings received over the course of these seven years and fourteen issues. And blessings on those who now carry the journal forward. May we all continue to learn how to keep our focus on God and make space in stillness for the deep meeting of God and self that is the gift of our new life in Christ.

—David & Juliet Benner

A Note from the Editors:

We are grateful for the gifts and talents that David and Juliet have brought to the pages of Conversations over these past years. We are also blessed that Conversations will remain in dialogue with the Benners. In our upcoming issues, we will continue to hear their wisdom, through interviews with David and features on their upcoming projects. David will also continue on our masthead as one of the three executive editors, along with Larry Crabb and Gary W. Moon. Please join us in praying for and blessing the Benners as they pursue God by embracing new opportunities in their journey.